CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.

"When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him, like radioactive fallout in an arable field, and after that there are certain crops that will no longer grow in him, while other, stranger, more fantastic growths may occasionally be produced." —Salman Rushdie

As we noted last year, our 14th great-grandmother, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, has many distinctions, not the least of which is her likelihood of having written the Shakespeare plays and sonnets. (For compelling evidence, see Sweet Swan of Avon: Did a Woman Write Shakespeare?) We couldn't help noticing that Mary Sidney's facial features bear an uncanny resemblance to the familiar Shakespeare visage. If the animated gif below doesn't animate, see the before-and-after frames.

12:30. "The steeple clock marks half past twelve. The sun is high and burning in the sky. It lights houses, palaces, porticos. Their shadows on the ground describe rectangles, squares, and trapezoids of so soft a black that the burned eye likes to refresh itself on them. What light. ... Has such an hour ever come? What matter, since we see it go!”

* January.† February.‡ March.§ April. "At least the twelfth hour came. Solemn. Melancholic.” "And now the sun has stopped, high in the center of the sky. And in everlasting happiness the statue immerses its soul in the contemplation of its shadow.” || May.a June. b July. "In fact, summer is a malady, it’s all fever and delirium and exhausting perspiration, an unending weariness.”c August.d September. "If the fifth hour of the afternoon is that which comes between evening and the second half of the day, the month of September is that which comes between two seasons: summer and autumn. That corresponds, in the case of a sick person, to the moment which precedes convalescence, and that which, naturally, at the same time, marks the end of the malady.” e October. "Autumn is convalescence.”f November. "Day is breaking. This is the hour of the enigma. This is also the hour of prehistory. The fancied song, the revelatory song of the last, morning dream of the prophet asleep at the foot of the sacred column, near the cold white simulacrum of a god.”g December. The beginning of life and health (winter).

We're often asked why we blog using the majestic plural (the "royal we"). Truth be told, it's personal. Our 27th great grandfather, King Henry II of England (so charmingly portrayed by Peter O'Toole in the classic film The Lion in Winter) is credited with the first recorded use of the majestic plural. Please don't mistake our pronouns for "the patronizing we" (as in, "Aren't we chipper today?") or "the psychotic we" (as in Gollum's "We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious.")

"Words and forms that did not exist at all in standard English some time ago are now becoming accepted into the standard language and may already have become fully accepted. This may surprise you."—Robert Lawrence Trask, Say What you Mean!(2005)

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Diabolical. "Some demon whispered him, that he had mistaken the road to fortune, and suggested that he had better retreat in time, and endeavor to patch up his hopes by another course of life." —"The Exile,” The American Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1, 1833, p. 242. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

"The answer is simple: the problem is one which we have created by making this false abstraction and setting it alongside the facts from which we have abstracted it as if it were another fact."—Charles M. Sherover, The Human Experience of Time (2001)

A still from Vertigo (a film
irreparably marred by Kim Novak's clownishly painted on eyebrows).

Did you hear about how in the next release of the Star Wars films, C3PO and R2R2 will have a new sidekick? What Lucas is calling an act of "strategic symbiosis" and what critics are decrying as blatant product placement, the iconic robots will be joined by what looks for all the world(s) like a floating iPad. The name of this superflat sidekick? B43D.

"Only two novels in the past 67 years have not been described somewhere on their dust jackets as 'compassionate,' and both of them were atlases." —M.J. Arlen, "How to Tell a Novel by Its Cover," LIFE (Aug. 21, 1964)

Is it true, as Momus
suggests, that there are "few tales which would not be improved by the
addition of the phrase 'suddenly, a shot rang out'"? Decide for
yourself as we alter the opening lines of . . .

In a little room, somewhat shabby and rather meanly furnished, a young girl stood looking round on its well-worn and tediously familiar features with great solemn eyes filled with utter distaste and dissatisfaction.
Suddenly, a shot rang out.

Is it true, as Momus
suggests, that there are "few tales which would not be improved by the
addition of the phrase 'suddenly, a shot rang out'"? Decide for
yourself as we alter the opening lines of . . .

"I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations bore me (even when they relate to literature), to visit people bores me, the joys and sorrows of my relatives bore me to my soul. Conversation takes the importance, the seriousness, the truth out of everything I think."—Franz Kafka, from his diary, 1918 (quoted in Metaphor and Memory by Cynthia Ozick)

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Diabolical. "Within me my rebellious demon whispered, 'Now is the time! Break through into the superluminous, hey?'” —Paul Goodman, The Empire City, 2001, p. 471. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

* A manual for typographers published in 1917 acknowledged that there are many beautiful forms of the ampersand, yet it forbade their use in "ordinary book work." Extraordinary books are another matter. Our lavishly illustrated Ampersand opus explores the history and pictography of the most common coordinating conjunction.

"You can call it a hunch or a gut feeling but either way something is not quite right with this picture and it is annoying the hell out of me." —Rebecca Hackney (Love Blooms in a Blizzard), surely not referring to the perfectly perfect picture that is Young Frankenstein.

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Diabolical. "While thus forsaken by all human help, all human pity, a tempting demon whispered that it would be better for her to return to her former way of life." —Anna Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders, 1852, p. 329. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

Go to this website and use the interactive compass tool to rate your level of bliss. I did it and my results affirmed my inner "bliss” but clued me in to an unclear professional "bliss” whenever I spun the wheel while concentrating on my work. I pledge to work on that until my bliss is congruent both inner and professionally.

Is it true, as Momus
suggests, that there are "few tales which would not be improved by the
addition of the phrase 'suddenly, a shot rang out'"? Decide for
yourself as we alter the opening lines of . . .